Chapter 7: Sacrifice
10 Insights from the Super Connected Tour: Rebalancing Digital & Analogue Life. Tool Seven in the 'Super Connected Toolkit': Sacrifice
“Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I’d just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now.” – Tom Waits
With the internet at our fingertips, we spend less time wondering. While googling instant answers can be helpful, it often stifles our imagination and intuition. This trade-off for convenience can sometimes diminish our creativity.
It’s kind of cool to occasionally forgo immediate answers to allow time to activate and develop our 'artist' selves. Picasso said we’re all born artists. Some of us do and do not remain artists as we become adults. But everyone has the ability, deep inside them, to imagine an idea and create something that didn’t exist before they had that idea. It’s just a case of finding that ability, and then nurturing it when it shows up.
When I got my first MacBook, it was strictly to write and record my songs on. Recently I’ve been looking back over the hard drives of all the files and folders of my early albums. I remember the amount of time I spent on my MacBook, only making music. I didn’t have internet, messages, emails and all those ‘essentials’ back then.
When I started using computers, they were a bridge between me,
and what was happening inside me creatively.
Today, it is still like that, but it’s also a bridge to what is happening inside everyone else too. And every-thing else, that is, has or will ever exist.
I’m still working on sacrificing a little bit more every day, and it’s very hard. But when I do manage it, I feel like I get more time back. The kind of time I used to have in the 90s and early 2000s. I’m two weeks into not using my iPhone at the moment and the amount of ‘stuff’ I just had to go without is both huge and insignificant.
Without a smartphone in my pocket, I don’t know the entire Wiki biography of every actor in a film I just watched. Weirdly, I just watch the film and let the mystery of my ignorance take second place to the director’s storytelling.
When someone gets their phone out because they just started watching a film and they want to know a minor detail, I’m pretty sure the writer and director of the film didn’t intend that to be part of the experience. Also, part of storytelling is what you leave out as well as what you leave in. Why isn’t the film / album / book enough?
It’s almost as if children are being taught that screens are our real parents. Our god.
I feel sad for young people who have learnt to carry around a device that can answer every question that pops into their head. Especially if they’re experiencing an art-form.
Corporations have sold us the idea that ‘to know is to excel’. That ‘information is all’. But I used to love telling my elders how little I knew about stuff when I was a kid. It got me the goods! It got me excited, and it got me mentors.
Being inquisitive is so important when we’re young,
but so is surrendering completely to not knowing ANYTHING.
Same with songs I used to Shazam in public places. I have always asked people what the song they are playing in their shop/restaurant/bar is. But most people don’t know anymore. Nowadays I hear something I like and accept that I may never hear it again. I don’t need to capture it. I just let it go. It came, I loved it, and then I lost it.
This is generally part of my current iPhone detox. I’m learning how not to capture or collect. Interestingly, I feel a lot lighter than usual and my eyes hurt less.
As Tom says: “We have a deficit of wonder right now”. Sacrifice can change that.
Musician and Filmmaker Tim Arnold has researched screen addiction and social media’s effects on mental health since 2017, culminating in the critically acclaimed album, film and theatre show, Super Connected - Nihal Arthanayake, BBC 5 LIVE
Listen to the album here and be among the first to see the film by signing up here.